We were delighted to host Erin Larkin of The Wine Advocate on her recent trip to New Zealand.
Erin missed out on joining us for our Kumeu Restrospective tastings, so we went into the family cellar once more, tasting through 32 vintages (some up to 21 years old) in what Erin described as a “monumental” tasting.
Read her full article below:
New Zealand: South Island Trip During Vintage 2025
New Zealand is best known globally for its Sauvignon Blancs from Marlborough, a cool, coastal, mountainous region on the northern tip of the South Island. In fact, the wines made in Marlborough account for almost 70% of the entire country’s crush, so the reputation is logical. However, there is infinitely more to this tiny nation than just Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, and it was perhaps this most recent trip, more than any other before it, that seriously impressed me and grabbed a hold of my heart.
The trip was deliberately focused on the South Island (with a brief sojourn in Kumeu at the beginning, followed by Hawke’s Bay) to properly visit and explore. I will visit the North Island on my next trip.
Morning at Grasshopper Rock dam, Central Otago
Kumeu
The Brajkovich family at Kumeu River most generously put on a huge tasting of their Chardonnays—32 in total, up to 21 years old. It was monumental. The opportunity to capture that much context and understanding in a single sitting is rare, and I can gladly say that my comprehension and cognizance of those wines and how they age is forever changed.
2019 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay - 96 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2039
The 2019 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay is straight out of the blocks with power and intensity. It is concentrated, with a scintillating score of gravelly phenolics that drag the fruit characters out over the palate. It veritably glitters with intense fruit, which is tropical without being mushy or sweet at all. The oak feels toasty, and the fruit and the acid are all in harmony. This is impressive plus.
2019 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2039
The 2019 Coddington Chardonnay remains as composed as ever, with nary a hair out of line, and is slowing down for no one. The wine today, six years from its harvest, feels complete, powerful and very long, with roasted peaches, white chocolate, preserved citrus rind, fennel and clove. None of these characters encapsulate the inherent minerality of it, however, and for my palate, that is the highlight. This is excellent.
2019 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2039
The 2019 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is weighted solely on the back palate and is powerful, tightly structured and salty. This is a wine of magnitude, complexity and textural width, and it shows even more promise for the future than the Coddington, which was looking mouthwateringly full of potential. This is a ripper.
2019 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay - 92 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2030
I tasted the 2019 Estate Chardonnay six years from harvest, almost to the date, and the wine is showing white chocolate, cigar leaf, shaved fennel and white peach. On the palate, the wine is complete—rich and full, with acidity that feels undiminished by time and with flavors of caramel wafer, salted peach and something like malt/Ovaltine that kisses the edges of the fruit. I'd be interested to see wherethis goes, because the finish and acidity remain composed—unfragmented—hinting at a longer life than perhaps the fruit has in it. It's exciting to drink now, though, and will be for the next few years.
2017 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay - 97 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2037
The 2017 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is so good. This is complex and composed, ultra sleek and restrained, long and undulating. This feels like it moves like the surface of a still lake, in ripples and eddies rather than the crashing, powerful waves of Maté's. I love this wine, and I love how it's looking today.
2017 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay - 97 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2037
The 2017 Mate's Vineyard Chardonnay shows that this wine needs time to come into its own. All the rambunctious energy and barely bridled power of the wine on release and close to it is harnessed by time. It shows a previously bucking brumby to be a purebred stallion, one made for speed and endurance. Excellent. It remains savory, the depth of complexity only deepening with time. I love this as much as I love the Hunting Hill—that wine being restrained and composed, this being a fete of power and concentration.
2017 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay - 94 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2037
The 2017 Coddington Chardonnay retains all of its energy and detail through these eight years from harvest, and we see intensity ofcharacters from bottle age under screw cap. The wine is fresh and complex, the acidity needing to unwind a bit in the glass, uncoil itself from the tendrils of fruit flavour. A distinctly savory wine, it has flavors of turmeric, saffron, fennel and a hint of bacon fat.
2017 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay - 93 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2037
I'm glad to be tasting these cooler-vintage 2017s alongside the riper 2019 vintage wines. They are very different in personality, and it allows for some comprehension of the style/vineyard within the glass. The 2017 Estate Chardonnay is a blend of six vineyards, which are now eight years from harvest. In the mouth, the cool vintage has held this wine in good stead. It is evolving and showing tertiary fruit characters, but that's all in sync with other aspects of the wine: phenolic structure, ripe acidity, gently toasty oak. The fruit here is evolving more slowly than the riper 2019 Estate Chardonnay. I love the complexity and detail here.
2014 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay - 96 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2039
The 2014 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay performs just as you'd expect, showing the intersection of a ripe vintage through the lens of this powerful vineyard planted to the Mendoza clone. Unlike the youthful rambunctiousness of the 2014 Hunting Hill, this is complete. It has found stillness and calm in the 11 years from harvest, and the wine feels merely as if it is settling into its long future. Like sitting in a comfortable chair, there's no saying when you might get up. This has that same patient air about it.
2014 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2014 Coddington Chardonnay leads with beeswax and brine, pressed white flowers, crushed shells and chalky minerality. The wine is restrained and elegant, mouthfilling in its intensity and showing spicy prowess through the finish. It's very, very good, excellent, in fact. Notions of oak-derived (?) bacon fat through the finish boost complexity and interest. There's plenty of time left to go here.
2014 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2039
The 2014 Hunting Hill Chardonnay has not yet crested the hill of middle age. Amazingly, the wine shows real energy and chutzpah on the mid-palate, bounding and leaping across the tongue in a variety of directions. This is busy, racy and full of intense fruit flavor. I'd still suggest it has a ways to go yet with regard to stilling. On the flip side, it offers a brilliant two-sided coin of drinking experience: one of bottle-age complexity, the other of youthful rambunctiousness.
2014 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay - 93 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2014 Estate Chardonnay hails from a warm, riper vintage, and the wine today, 11 years from harvest, is laced together with saline threads of acidity. The phenolic structure inherent on the palate cups the fruit in its hands, allowing the fruit to show preserved citrus, salty roast chicken skin, red apple, yellow peach and linen/pressed cloth. The wine has started to show beeswax and biscuit. This is tremendous. And here I was thinking this cuvée was best consumed within a decade of harvest. This vintage shows it has five to 10 goodyears left, and possibly then some.
2013 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay - 97 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2038
The 2013 Coddington Chardonnay is delicious, complex and nutty, composed and sleek. This shows an intensity of fruit and length that I find utterly attractive, all of it swathed in a cloak of chalky minerality. There's not a lot more to be said of this; it is both calm and capacious, enduring and savory. This gets a big yes from me.
2013 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay - 96 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2038
The 2013 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is sapid and penetrating in its intensity of flavor. The wine is showing a little more development than the Hunting Hill tasted beside it, but this merely translates to notions of wafer and pressed linen, both of which are very attractive through the finish. It is almost oily in texture. This is a magnificent wine.
2013 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2038
The 2013 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay shows us all the power and density that the vineyard is famous for. The wine has hints of buttered popcorn alongside salted yellow peach, green apple acidity and preserved lemon rind lacing the edges. The wine is not yet unbound by time, and while it shows some development of the fruit through the finish, it promises a long future in front of it, one that will undoubtedly morph and grow with more years in the bottle. This is super.
2013 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay - 93 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2033
The 2013 Estate Chardonnay is from a cool, low-yielding year—flowering endured a major frost event, which disrupted the smooth start to the growing season, and blew apart yields by as much as 50%. The wine is savory, littered with pockets of sea salt acidity and shaped by chalky phenolics. It's mineral and textural, long and wrapped around a coil of acidity.
2010 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay - 96 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2010 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay has now come into its own. Where the Coddington is energetic and bright, almost sweetly fruited, the Maté's is savory, intense and structural. Despite the season, it never sheds this inherent personality trait. It ripples and courses with flavor. It speaks in a throaty rasp, like a person who ceased smoking long ago, and it is charming for that. It is coaxing. The acidity balances the fruit characters, keeping it fresh and racy.
2010 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay - 96 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2010 Coddington Chardonnay is 15 years from its harvest, and the wine looks sensational for it. Bottle age has contributed spice complexity and depth of flavor, but it has done nothing to diminish the sapidity and penetration of fruit concentration. This is an excellent wine. I love the acid through the finish; it beckons.
2010 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay - 93 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2030
The 2010 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is soft and malleable in the mouth. As per usual for these wines, the acidity remains undiminished, yet the fruit has rounded significantly. There are flavors of crushed nuts, scraped vanilla pod and fresh wafer, and yet this doesn't cover it; there is perhaps more of a waffle character. It's a lovely wine.
2010 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay - 91 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2030
The 2010 Estate Chardonnay is now fully savory and evolved, with clothy notes of pressed linen, beeswax, white flowers, nuts and biscuits. In the mouth, all aspects come together as one—the fruit has been so permanently embossed with structure that it's hard to know where one starts and the other finishes. The acidity that laces these aspects together has kept form, but it has shed its intense race and pace, providing us with a more sedate experience. This is lovely.
2007 Kumeu River Hunting Hill Chardonnay - 98 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2007 Hunting Hill Chardonnay is restrained and complete. I keep writing that for this wine, but it is so pertinent to the drinking experience. The wine shows fennel, mustard seed, white strawberry, scratched lime, preserved lemon rind, sea salt and crushed shells. There's black tea and something like cassis and garden rose woven through the finish. I love this. Wow.
2007 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2007 Coddington Chardonnay is perfumed and fragrant, full of flavor and spearheaded by a glass tip of acidity. This is sapid and penetrating, intense and long, and the wine, at 18 years from its harvest date, is looking complete. It's a postcard or time capsule from the past and a reminder not to drink these wines too young; you will miss the complexity and the depth and sheer force of flavor if you do. Take it from someone who did.
2007 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2033
The 2007 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay is concentrated and true to its form. What I have learned from this great tasting at Kumeu River estate is that the vineyard character endures through all seasons. It is inimitable, raw, unbound, serious and intense. Here, the wine shows some caramel and wafer to close.
2007 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay - 94 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2035
The 2007 Estate Chardonnay is proving me wrong. I don't mind that. At 18 years from its harvest date, the wine has held together with remarkable endurance. It is complete, nutty and wide, with a calm intensity that I like so much. It's a beautiful wine, all preserved citrus, crushed rocks and wisps of graphite.
2004 Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay - 95 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2034
The 2004 Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay proves what I have come to believe: Maté's will look like Maté's, before anything else. The wine has started to caramelize, and when served at a very cool temperature, I like this character. It's an evolving wine with further promise yet, with salted peach, waffle, sea salt, white tea, pressed flowers and wet limestone.
2004 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay - 94 pts
Drink Date: 2025 - 2034
The 2004 Estate Chardonnay is a slow-moving thing, and at 21 years from its harvest, it has evolved into a graceful, composed wine. The acidity, it seems, will never be lessened through the annals of time, and all characters come into focus through the lens of the time it has spent in bottle.
The full article can be found on Robert Parker's website here - Please note there is a pay wall to read the full review.